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Momodou
Denmark
11832 Posts |
 Posted - 05 Aug 2007 : 19:43:57
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SUFFERING IN SILENCE;
THE PLIGHT OF GAMBIAN NURSES
Please allow me space in your widely read Newspaper to put my case before the public and the leadership of our country for their honest and sincere consideration. I am a young man of thirty seven years of age. I graduated as a Nurse (State Enrolled Nurse) and started working in early 1994, well before the July 22 military take over. Therefore, I can proudly say that I have served my country now for thirteen years in my capacity as a nurse, and during all this
time, I have neither been suspended nor given any warning letter.
I have worked both in the urban and rural areas of the country under very difficult conditions: sometimes conducting deliveries under candle light or hurricane lamps in very poor ventilated rooms during hot summer seasons and without proper personal protective equipment and knowingly risking my own life in the process of saving others.
I have not regretted and will never regret whatever I do or went through in serving my countrymen and women. I have the desire to serve them for the rest of my life. However, I come to realise that I have a duty to my family also and which is to feed and cloth them well and to give them a decent shelter, which I could not do because of my earning capacity. After thirteen years of service, I could not save anything to enable me to secure an empty plot of land for myself
and my family. All I earned goes to feeding, clothing and payment of school fees. With the rising prices of basic commodities, even the little I was able to do for the family is becoming an impossibility. Sometimes I sit and ponder about what would happen to my family if I should die today. Where and how are they going to live? Probably it was such thoughts which might have forced many of my colleagues in the field to leave for private clinics and hospitals, NGOs or even
go abroad in search of greener pastures. It is not because they are unpatriotic or unwilling to serve their country, as some people may think, but because they could not foresee any bright future for their children with their parents continuing to earn what they are earning under government employment. It is in light of these circumstances under which I am living which force them to leave.
The Government, therefore, needs to do something to encourage us to stay and continue serving our people. We, too, need to have hope in the future of our children, if we are to continue serving for the rest of our lives. We need hundred percent salary increment and land to provide shelter for our families.
A concerned Nurse
source: Foroyaa Newspaper Burning Issue
Issue No. 89/2007, 1 – 2 August 2007
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A clear conscience fears no accusation - proverb from Sierra Leone |
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